Photo: Earl Gardner

In Part 1 of 2 in our one-day series on change – or lack there-of – within the Union organization, Tim Jones gives his thoughts on the Union’s top-to-bottom system. Look for a more statistical analysis from Chris Sherman in part 2 later today.

As Peter Andrews and others have aptly pointed out, the schedule makers played a role in the successes of the Philadelphia Union’s two teenage debutants on the club’s opening night, successes in which we can all rejoice. While Brad Friedel’s New England had some successes late in preseason, they seem still in the midst of a rebuild.

But in addition to weak opposition, another factor contributed to the successful teenage MLS debuts. For as long as this writer began to call into Bethlehem Steel head coach Brendan Burke’s weekly conference calls in June of 2016, Burke has made reference to “the template.”

“The template” dictates that all teams in the Philadelphia Union organization be coached to play the same system the same way, from the first team to the Steel to the Academy.

Much angst has been directed at the template from the beginning of the Earnie Stewart and Jim Curtin organization reboot that many call Union 2.0. Its inflexible lack of adaptability, its forcing of square pegs into round holes, has bothered all the youth coaches among us whose teaching stock in trade has been to identify the 11 best soccer players available and discern the tactical system that displays their strengths and hides their weaknesses.

Last week on the evening of March 3, 2018 , we all saw the benefit of a single template permeating the organization at all levels. It creates seamless transitions.

Anthony Fontana and Auston Trusty had no hesitancy what so ever about what to do, when to do it, and the manner in which it was to be done. Mental muscle memory, if readers will forgive the phrase, was already fully developed. The kids belonged from tap off.

We suspect we will see such seamless transitions in the future from the Mark McKenzies and Matt Reals lower down in the organization. They were manifest in their Steel debuts.

This writer’s responsibility is to cover Bethlehem Steel FC. This fan’s civilian entertainment interest is in Philadelphia Union. This old history teacher has been slow to fully realize the positive impact the mental muscle memory can have on a young soccer player making his first-team debut.

Without doubt other factors contributed to Fontana’s and Trusty’s success. Trusty mentioned his experiences in other “big games,” like last season’s CONCACAF qualifying and U-20 World Cup in South Korea. Coach Burke’s first assessment of Fontana at Nippert Stadium, Cincinnati in 2016 stressed his fearlessness.

The template has frustrated the dickens out of many of us with its rigidity.

And then two teenage boys come onto the senior pitch to play among men, and neither one behaves nor looks like a teenager. The template helped create that.